


can't gamble the future.

by LovelyVerisimilitude



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson), Crushes, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Not Beta Read, Swearing, does this count as crack?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26915794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyVerisimilitude/pseuds/LovelyVerisimilitude
Summary: “Wait,” Beckendorf says, confused. “What does Connor have overPercy?”Luke sinks back into his chair. “Well, where do I begin―”“Five drachmas he mentions thatonetime Annabeth hugged Connor,” Thalia mutters to Silena, tossing a few gilded coins onto the center of the table. “He never shuts up about it.”(CANON DIVERGENCE― The senior counselors don’t bet on trivial matters like childish, puppy love romances. No. Not at all. Of course not.)
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Connor Stoll, Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Silena Beauregard/Charles Beckendorf (implied)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 139





	can't gamble the future.

**Author's Note:**

> i. no beta reader.
> 
> ii. let's all pretend thalia never died on half-blood hill. this is set during the lightning thief.
> 
> iii. this was inspired by [this tumblr post](https://connabeth.tumblr.com/post/631143008778272768/au-where-thalia-doesnt-die-and-is-just-vibing) by tumblr user connabeth. i don't really ship it but the memes are funny so jkagkgfd

In the rec room of the Big House, there’s a chart.

It’s a rather ordinary chart to the untrained eye. Flimsy. Paper-white. Has a bunch of lettering in shiny ink and pencil lead and glittering gel ink with fucking sparkles in it. A cartoon, pastel rainbow sticker is smacked on top, pinning it to the crowded, wooden cork bulletin board. Just a standard, ordinary chart. Chiron hardly notices it. Argus notices, but can’t figure out what it means.

The senior counselors, though. That chart meant something important to them.

# 

* * *

“ _Gods,_ I can’t believe I’m going to be late to my _own meeting,_ ” Silena groans sourly as she speedwalks up the crooked stairs of the Big House, meticulously plucking stray golden hay from her thick, frizzy black hair.

“We’re not _that_ late,” Beckendorf says, fanning himself with his hand. The sun’s boiling heat shines on his face, sticking his shirt to his skin. “We’re just having a talk about the bets, right? About Percy, Connor, and Annabeth?”

“Yes, but I want to see if I won or not, too.” She thumbs a pretty gold drachma, glinting in the light. “And Thalia told me she had some...what did she call it? Vital information about Connor and Percy?”

“Vital information?”

“I’m not sure, either,” she admits.

“Right.” He turns to her. “Oh, um, hold on.” He tenderly brushes extra hay off her shoulders, pinching his lips together in unmoving concentration so he can keep his increasing heart rate in check. He pulls his hand away as quickly as possible. “There―um, were you at the pegasus stables?”

“Yeah. Had to go, uh, do a warm-up,” Silena says, avoiding his eyes as they enter. “Were you at the forge?”

“I couldn’t make it there. Some problems with the―the, um, cabin.”

They pass by the living room and the kitchen. He remembers none of the campers actually used the kitchen unless they wanted to locate Chiron (Annabeth), prank Mr. D (Travis and Connor), or was starving for a midnight snack and didn’t know the camp rules yet (Percy). They had also attempted a camp-wide potluck a few years back. Most campers required the kitchen. It did not end well.

Beckendorf inadvertently snatches a clean, white cloth off one of the counters and washes it in cold tap water. The rec room door is closed, but he can still hear the audible racket of arguing and objects falling over and a few irritated stomps. He sends Silena an anxious glance before swinging the door open.

“What did we miss?” Beckendorf asks as he presses the cloth over the slick sweat on his forehead. “Sorry we couldn’t, uh, be on time. Someone broke the mechanisms at the back of the cabin and―” He stops and looks at them all. “What―what happened?”

Several of the counselors are on their feet, fists pounded into the table. A mismatch of chairs have been toppled over. A paddle has a burning opening through it, tendrils of steam rising from the singed rubber. The ping pong balls are littered across the ground. One of them rolls towards him and bumps into Beckendorf’s sneakers. He stares at it. There’s a black scorch mark marring one side. Like there was a fire. Like it’s been fried.

Both Luke and Thalia instinctively point at each other, echoing, “It was her,” and “It was him,” somewhat immature for being the two eldest in the room.

Beckendorf heedfully bends down to pick up the scorched ping pong ball, examining it as he walks over, turns a chair upright, and sits down. “Okay, so I’m guessing today’s meeting isn’t going very well.”

“No shit,” Lee murmurs, lips barely moving as he flicks an undamaged paddle, eyes trained on the white ball bouncing up and down. “Thalia already ruined my game of ping pong.”

“No one was even playing with you,” Malcolm says, not looking up from his notepad.

“Shut up, Malcolm.”

“Wait,” Beckendorf interrupts, glancing at Thalia. He holds up the ping pong ball. “Did you do this?”

“What does it look like?” She lifts a hand, blinding white light crackling between her fingertips.

“Incredible,” he murmurs, already stroking a thumb over his chin, deliberating the ways she could be valuable around the workshop. From fire to electricity to powering circuits. Then he thinks of the inevitable destruction. Charred cabins, dead grass, and a laughing Thalia above it all. It would be risky, yes, and Beckendorf’s certain Chiron wouldn’t permit him to harvest lightning, but―

And that’s when he realizes everybody’s staring at him. Even Lee had momentarily paused his paddle.

“Um, right.” Beckendorf clears his throat. “Not incredible. No. Very, um, bad. We don’t play with lightning indoors.”

“Well,” Thalia begins, picking up a dining chair to sit. She turns it backwards and rests her chin on the back of the seat. “I only did it ‘cause Luke―”

“ _Me?_ ” Luke shoves a hand to his chest in offense, uncharacteristically exasperated for someone who’s usually so easygoing. “ _You’re_ the one who’s sabotaging everything!”

“You say that like you aren’t doing it yourself!”

“I was only sabotaging because _you_ were sabotaging.”

“That doesn’t fucking make sense.”

“Sabotaging?” Silena repeats skeptically, studying them both with an inspecting eye. Her delicate hands are gathered in her lap, fingers enveloping and twisting as she thinks. “You mean―you mean you both were cheating? With the bets?”

“Not exactly,” Luke says reluctantly. “The bets haven’t been tampered with at all. But _she’s―_ ” he points at Thalia “―sabotaging Connor time.”

“ _Connor time,_ ” Beckendorf quotes blankly. As if this situation couldn’t get weird enough.

“Connor’s time with Annabeth,” he elaborates. “She’s stealing him away―”

“Oh, like I can _steal_ a _Stoll,_ ” Thalia retorts with a scoff, rolling her eyes dramatically.

“I’m confused,” Malcolm states flatly, dropping his notes. There are some dark lead squiggles etched into his notepad, some of the figures strangely appearing like Percy, Connor, and Annabeth with curlicue question marks surrounding their heads in mass perplexity. “And I’ve been here for the past fifteen minutes. What does this sabotaging thing have to do with the _bets?_ ”

“Well, last week we all bet that Annabeth was going to team up with Connor or Percy for that three legged race, right?” Luke gestures to the chart on the wall from their past rendezvous, the paper marked with smatterings of their names and a myriad of the amounts of bets placed. Malcolm had absolutely despised their lack of sense when they first created it, but wrote his name somewhere anyway. “Sign-ups start today. And Mr. D told us Annabeth didn’t even sign up for the damned thing even though she told me she wanted to win! And, it turns out, Connor thought so, too, and now he’s _upset!_ ”

“I don’t know,” Lee says, shrugging. He accidentally hits the ping pong ball in Beckendorf’s direction, but all he does is catch it and toss it back to Lee. “He didn’t seem _that_ upset―”

“He was bawling his eyes out,” Luke says solemnly, deceiving pity. "But the point is that Thalia took Connor away from the sign-up sheets at the dining pavilion!" 

Malcolm raises a hand. Pencil graphite smears the pads of his fingers. "Wait, wait. Hold on. You were cleaning up yesterday's Capture the Flag game with me almost all morning. How did you even _know_ Connor was _in_ the pavilion?"

"He didn't," Thalia says. “Luke said that Connor was with Annabeth at the dining pavilion, but I _know_ she was with Percy―”

“That’s impossible! Percy needed to go clean the stables―”

“Percy doesn’t have stable duty, though,” Silena points out, frowning. "I was there and I didn't see him."

Luke seems unbothered. "Maybe he got lost. He's new, after all."

“Well, Connor couldn’t have been with Annabeth," Thalia claims. “He needed to go to the Arts and Crafts Center.”

“Did he touch anything that wasn’t his?” Malcolm suddenly asks, concerned. “If he laid _one fucking finger on my project―_ ”

“Arts and Crafts?” Luke sputters, squinting his eyes at her cynically. “Connor doesn’t even _like_ arts and crafts.”

“He does now.”

"This is getting ridiculous," Lee says, massaging his forehead. His paddle is abandoned, the ping pong ball now juggling in his hands. "I don't even know why I'm here. I just want my fucking money."

"You're not picking a side?" Silena asks inquisitively, arching a flawless dark brow. "Because Percy seems like a good candidate for Annabeth. They clicked so well when he first arrived. They even call each other those little nicknames, which is just _adorable._ ”

“But...you know…” Lee waves his hands vaguely. “ _Money._ ”

Silena taps her finger against her lip disapprovingly, but shrugs. “I’m just saying, Percy and Annabeth seem _really_ cute―”

"Hey, Connor and Annabeth have been best friends for years,” Luke interjects, his chair starting to lean back so only two legs are touching the ground. “I've seen them grow up. Ever since the first spider prank,” he says nostalgically, a weary look on his face as he remembers. “It was not a fun time back then.”

“Wait,” Beckendorf says, confused. “What does Connor have over _Percy?_ ”

Luke sinks back into his chair. “Well, where do I begin―”

“Five drachmas he mentions that _one_ time Annabeth hugged Connor,” Thalia mutters to Silena, tossing a few gilded coins onto the center of the table. “He never shuts up about it.”

“It was a revolutionary moment!” he protests.

“Everything’s a fucking revolutionary moment to you.”

"You don't even _like_ Percy. Why are you rooting for him?"

"The same reason why you root for Connor. ‘Cause he's my responsibility."

"Yeah, because you make such a _fantastic_ role model,” Lee mutters.

Thalia zaps a rocket of electricity across the room. The white ping pong ball in Lee’s hands scorches to nothing but a flaky black crisp. “Anyway,” she says, ignoring Lee’s squawks of horror, “Percy and Annabeth seem cool together, and Annabeth deserves the best.”

Luke clenches his jaw menacingly. Viciously. “You’re just mad that Connor and Annabeth dyed your hair bright orange that one year―”

“Really?” Silena asks, eyes wide. “And I haven’t seen any _pictures?_ ”

“I think they’re in the attic―”

Thalia pummels a fist into the table, rattling the rest of the ping pong balls over the edge. “You’re just mad that Percy and Annabeth dropped your bed into the canoe lake a few weeks ago. With you in it. In the bright and godly time of six in the fucking morning.” Luke guffaws, but doesn’t say anything to counter that. “They would _totally_ sign up for that race. If Annabeth signed up at all, that is."

"Wait, so if Annabeth didn’t sign up at all, _no one_ gets the _money?_ " Lee interrupts.

“Technically―”

“Oh no, not the _technicalities,_ Malcolm―”

“So no one is talking about where Annabeth went, or―”

“You’re just mad that they made macaroni paper mache and exploded it in your face―”

“ _You’re_ just mad that―”

Their voices start to jumble over one another, a chorus of compromises, arguments, and in some cases, pure utter bullshit.

Beckendorf sits in the center, the only one with his mouth shut tight, and prays that the gods help them all.

# 

* * *

“How much do you think they’ll be at this for?” Percy asks, peering inside the crack of the ajar door of the rec room. Inside, an excruciatingly clamorous argument had broken out between the counselors.

After a few puzzling fiascos that morning, Percy found himself waiting in the arena for Luke, expecting another sword fighting lesson, but Luke never showed his face.

Percy had given up and wandered around for a while until he found Connor deviously escaping from Arts and Crafts, a trail of neon blue paint following behind him and a swarm of art supplies in his arms. They were eluding the artists when they saw Beckendorf and Silena enter the Big House, and decided to go follow them for safety (or for a prank―whichever). Instead of finding two unsuspecting victims, they discovered a meeting held in their honor, which is rather traumatizing for two twelve year olds. Traumatizing for anyone, really.

Connor shrugs, picking the chunks of dirt between the indentations of his soccer cleats with a thin, watercolor paintbrush. They stashed the art supplies in the cabinets. They’ll give them back to the Arts and Crafts students. Eventually. “Don’t know. Until one of us dates Annabeth, I guess.”

“Oh.” Percy’s face colors. He considers not to tell Connor how weird that is. “Are we old enough to date yet?”

“I don’t know. I can ask Travis.”

Percy highly doubts Travis knew anything about relationships considering that Travis is, well, _Travis,_ but whatever. Connor’s brother, not his.

“Woah, is that gold?” Percy whispers, pointing at the circular, polished pieces being casted into the middle, creating a mound of treasure.

“Yeah, drachmas.” Connor snaps his fingers, an idea popping into his mind. “Hey, maybe we should start betting, too!”

“I don’t even have any of those. They look more expensive than my house.”

“That’s okay. I can steal―uh, borrow Luke’s. He’s got a bunch. A whole bag.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Connor says, nudging Percy’s shoulder away from the door so he can poke an eye into the rec room. “How do you think he manages to keep up with all the other counselors? He’s, like, the only one betting for me.”

“Oh.” Percy rubs the back of his neck. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind losing.”

“Really?”

Connor pauses. His reassuring smile dissolves into a frown. A scrutinizing, almost disheartening expression is on his face. “Sometimes.”

Percy doesn’t know what to think of his answer. Ever since he’s been introduced to the Stoll brothers, it’s been pranks and fun times and rainbows. He doesn’t remember if he’s ever had friends quite like them, people who can be crafty and mischievous and troublesome. The way they prank the people who deserve it and prank the people who don’t deserve it, but still get a good laugh out of them. It’s cool. Unique.

But it gets rather complicated. Messy. Tricky. Especially when it comes to Annabeth. Percy knows she and Connor are good friends. And that’s good. Yeah. Good. They’re all friends. Freaking great. They’re the best.

But he can’t seem to forget the insignificant moments (that Percy totally does not pay attention to) when Connor’s stares linger on Annabeth a little too long when she’s expediently scribbling ideas on a whiteboard, when they have their own inside jokes he’ll stay up all night inexhaustibly parsing, when Annabeth laughs at any of Connor’s particularly hilarious jokes. There’s still an ugly, gnarly feeling in his gut whenever those instances occur. Percy wants to rip the feeling out and throttle it by the neck. Or lie down and cry. Whatever.

He hates being this stupid.

“I kinda wanna tell them we’re here,” Connor says absentmindedly.

“Nah, save it, Connor,” Percy convinces, sitting back. “I think they’ll be betting for a _looong_ time.”

Connor drops next to him.

They listen and wait.

“Hey,” Connor says after a while. He nudges Percy’s knee with his. “You wanna raid the pantry?”

# 

* * *

“Thanks for helping me compete in that race, Grover.” Annabeth tucks the blonde curls away from her mouth, breathless. Her hair’s untidy. Her heart’s pounding in her chest, restless after a day long workout. Her throat tastes like a deserted, sandy wasteland. She needs to get water.

“Oh. Um. Yeah.” Grover treads steadily behind her. The grass bristles against their feet. “Sorry we didn’t win.”

“No, it’s okay,” she reassures. Her chin ducks into her neck as she spies the ground below her. Her shoes are filthy. Daubed in thin, evergreen pine needles and soil. There’s a reddish scratch just above her ankle where she staggered over the pointed brink of a rock. “I just wanted someone to compete with me.” She slips her fingers into her pockets, frowning at the cabins in the distance, lost in thought.

“What are you thinking about?”

“What? Nothing,” she lies. “It’s nothing.” Grover gives her an unconvinced look. Annabeth’s shoulders slump. “I’m just―just wondering where Percy and Connor went. I mean, I don’t know why none of them showed up. I thought they were going to team up with each other, but I guess―I guess not.”

“Wait.” Grover stops. Looks at her. Looks at her harder. “You thought―you thought Percy and Connor were going to compete? Percy and Connor?”

Annabeth blinks at him. “Well. Yeah. I thought we could talk about it at the dining pavilion. I was already teaming up with you.”

“Percy and Connor,” Grover deadpans. He gestures with his hands. “Them. Together. Against you.”

“Sure. It could’ve been friendly competition.”

“That... _makes sense,_ ” he says through clenched teeth.

Annabeth loosens the hair tie from her ponytail, retying it so that it wouldn’t fall. “Now that I think about it, none of the counselors were there, either. At the three legged race, I mean.”

“Oh yeah,” Grover says. “Mr. D created the race.”

“Mr. D?” Annabeth scrunches her eyebrows together, snapping the hair tie to completion. “Why would he do that?”

Grover twiddles his thumbs back and forth, anxious. “I have no idea.”

# 

* * *

Mr. D sighs in relief as he clutches his freezing ice-cold tin can of Coke. A wind breezes by, smelling like campfire smoke and fresh strawberries.

Finally. A fucking opportunity to self indulge in some laziness after that Tartarus of a race. He’s quite satisfied with himself. Not even Percy―uh, Peter Johnson was at that competition, which was a bonus. Not his original intention, but a bonus.

And Mr. D has that chart to thank. He saw it one day, skimmed over it, and the inkling of a plan started from there. That Luke boy graciously asked him if the Annabeth girl had signed up. Mr. D lied and said no, because he could. And now havoc is wreaking in the rec room inside.

He can hear the intense, unrestrained yells. He can hear a chair being thrown and crashing into a window. A couple more hollers.

Good. Some _spice_ for once.

Mr. D takes a long, well-deserved sip of his drink.

**Author's Note:**

> i. i don't know what i'm writing anymore. why am i doing this. i do not know.
> 
> ii. feel free to request ships and prompts! i'm open to a lot of ships, so don't be afraid to ask. (i'm also open to characters to study. sort of like this fic.)
> 
> [tumblr](https://lovely-verisimilitude.tumblr.com/)


End file.
